Ouabain

Cultivated for medicine. The juice is used as an arrow poison.

Lianas woody, to 25 m, latex white. Trunk to 10 cm in diam.; branches dark or purplish brown, densely lenticellate, branchlets glabrous. Petiole 0.5-3.2 mm; leaf blade ovate, elliptic, or obovate, 5-18 2-9 cm, leathery, glabrous; lateral veins 5-11 pairs. Cymes 3-32-flowered, glabrous. Flowers fragrant. Sepals obovate or broadly so, 0.7-1.8 cm. Corolla white, turning yellow at base, reddish or purple above, throat reddish; tube 2.5-4.5 cm, inflated in distal half; lobes orbicular or nearly so, 1.5-3.5 X 1.5-3.2 cm, apex rounded; corona lobes pink, awl-shaped, 0.5-1.5 cm, exserted. Filaments pubescent adaxially, connective glabrous, extending into a tail 6-12 mm. Follicles divergent at 180°, cylindric, 23-41 X 3-4.3 cm. Seeds to 2 cm, beak 1.6-6.2 cm, coma to 5 cm. Fl. Feb. 2n = 18.

Taiwan [native to W and WC Africa]

Roupellia grata Wallich & Hooker, Bot. Mag. 75: t. 4466. 1849; Strophanthus gratus (Wallich & Hooker) Franchet.